Discovery of Critical Functions of Histone Demethylase, PHF8, in Mediating ATRA Response in APL

Transcription deregulation plays a key role in acute leukemogenesis, which is mostly initiated by chimeric transcription factors such as PML–RARa that accounts for almost 100% of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). While APL is uniquely sensitive to all trans retinoic acid (ATRA) treatment and has been the paradigm of differentiation/epigenetic therapies, the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown and are major interests in the field with a potential of extending the success to other hematological malignancies. Previously, others and we have shown that aberrant recruitment of histone deacetylases and polycomb repressive complexes by oligomeric PML-RARa are key for suppression of its downstream targets and promote cellular transformation. ATRA treatment disrupts their bindings and results in de-repression of target genes. However, the identification of the co-activator complex responsible for gene activation upon ATRA treatment remains a major hurdle that significantly hinders the progress of understanding mechanisms underlying the epigenetic therapy.

Given the critical functions of JmjC-domains containing histone demethylases in mediating transcriptional regulation, we performed a systematic screening for differential interaction between JmjC-histone demethylases and PML–RARa upon ATRA treatment. We identified a highly specific interaction between PML–RARa and Plant Homeodomain Finger 8 (PHF8). To assess its effect on histone methylation, we detected specific reduction of H3K9me2 and enhancement of H3K4me3 in PHF8 transfected cells, consistent with its function as a transcriptional activator. This was further supported by results from chromatin immuno-precipitation (ChIP) assays in human APL cell line (NB4) showing that PHF8 differentially bound and mediated the same histone modifications in RARb promoter and activated its expression. To investigate the functional significance of this interaction, PHF8 was expressed in human NB4 cells harboring PML-RARa or murine primary bone marrow cells transformed by APL fusion proteins. Induction of PHF8 expression significantly decreased their in vitro transformation capacity in the presence of physiological concentrations of ATRA. Conversely, specific down-modulation of PHF8 expression by shRNAs reduced ATRA sensitivity of these cells, suggesting a critical function of PHF8 in mediating ATRA response. We hypothesized that PHF8 may be able to sensitize ATRA resistant cells to the treatment. Hence, we induced expression of PHF8 in the ATRA resistant variant of NB4 line, NB4-MR2. We were able to demonstrate that PHF8 sensitized NB4-MR2 cells to ATRA treatment in vitro. In contrast, NB4-MR2 cells expressing PHF8-F279S, a catalytically inactive mutant could not be sensitized to ATRA treatment, indicating that the enzymatic activity is critical for mediating the ATRA response. Most importantly, NB4-MR2 cells expressing wild type PHF8 were also sensitive to ATRA treatment in vivo and failed to induce leukemia in NOD/SCID mice, which would otherwise succumb to leukemia in a very brief latency.

To gain further insights into the molecular regulation of PHF8 in ATRA response, we characterized the potential functions of CDK1-mediated phosphorylation of PHF8. It is known that in ATRA treated leukemic cells Cyclin A translocates into the nucleus where it interacts with CDK1. Activated CDK1 induces phosphorylation of PHF8 at two serine (S33)/ threonine (T84) phosphorylation sites. Our results showed that PHF8 in its phosphorylated form had a much higher binding affinity to PML-RARa. Consistently, ChIP analyses revealed that the binding of PHF8 to the RARb promoter and the resultant activation were significantly augmented when PHF8 was constitutively phosphorylated. Moreover, inhibition of PHF8 dephosphorylation by Okadaic Acid, sensitized NB4-MR2 cells to ATRA treatment.

We discovered a novel function of the histone demethylase PHF8 in mediating therapeutic response in both ATRA sensitive and ATRA resistant cells. This function of PHF8 is critically dependent on two phosphorylation sites as well as its histone modification activity. Thus, therapeutic interventions such as phosphatase inhibitors that enhance the PHF8 activity might become useful tools for development of new epigenetic therapies sensitizing leukemic cells to ATRA treatment.

No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.